Stephen Colbert and Philosophy - Aaron Allen Schiller [44]
But is Clinton totally full of shit? Well, Clinton pointed out that even a little savings during hard times can make a big difference to those struggling and she said she’d impose a windfall tax on the oil companies to pay for the tax cut. If her real goal is to provide temporary immediate relief, even if it results in raising costs long-term, then maybe her proposal is not so bad. It is a matter of priorities. Maybe she thinks we can handle the higher gas prices better down the line, once we turn the economy as a whole around. For now, let’s help the poor drivers. The difficulty here is that the difference between an incompetent truth-seeker, a deceiver and a bullshitter is a matter of intention.
To illustrate the difficulty, let’s consider an example. Have you ever wondered whether the triumvirate of Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Steve Carell all really like each other as much as they seem to? Maybe there are hidden hostilities. Maybe all the wonderful smiling and hugging they do with each other on the shows or at the Emmys are just to keep up appearances for their respective careers. Suppose Jon genuinely adores his colleagues, while Stephen secretly despises Jon for keeping him down all those years and is jealous of Steve whose career is now more fully independent of Jon. As for Steve, he doesn’t think much of his colleagues at all anymore, so doesn’t really feel one way or the other and hasn’t reflected on his relationship. Suppose Mo Rocca interviews them for a piece, and asks how they feel about each other and they all say “Oh, we’re all great friends.” Jon’s telling the truth (or at least being honest, since it might not be true through no fault on his part); Stephen’s lying to cover up his true feelings; and Steve is probably just bullshitting. For Steve, it’s not that it’s true or false; he’s just saying what he thinks he’s supposed to say in that kind of situation, or responding habitually.
So, maybe we can’t say for sure whether Clinton is bullshitting us since we don’t really know what her intentions are. We don’t see into her intimate thought processes, so we can’t figure out what she really believes and why she really says what she says. But we still can be fairly confident that there is a lot of bullshit out there. Frankfurt claims that bullshit is so prevalent because it is unavoidable whenever the situation forces someone to talk when they don’t know what they are talking about. This is why the classroom might be so full of bullshit, from both students and instructors. And this is why politics is full of bullshit. The motives and intentions in the political discourse are often far removed from expressing true descriptions of the world, or even false ones. That’s why we are so quick to think that Clinton and so many others are really just pandering and bullshitting their way through the day.
But, of course, Frankfurt isn’t exactly right on this. A situation can force me to talk, and I can talk in response, without giving up my respect for the truth. In the classroom, for example, I can say, “Well, I don’t know for sure, but I have heard …” Maybe I have to fill up the air, but I don’t need to fill it up with bullshit. Politicians don’t need to bullshit either. They choose to. And it’s not necessarily bullshit if they speak falsely, as Frankfurt notes. We can then imagine a world in which the politicians don’t speak beyond their most reasoned and honest opinions. So the political forum is not inevitably a shithouse, but the temptation to dump one’s share is quite high.
The Truthiness of the Vote
If what I have been saying is true, then something odd